Admiral
by sorceress2
Summary: Eriol returns with victory from a devastating war, but in part is himself defeated. Based on ideas from the book Ender's Game. ExT, duh. R&R please. Thanx. Now finished!
1. Dark for Foreboding

Admiral  
  
Chapter One  
  
Dark for Foreboding  
Disclaimers: This story sprouted from the ideas of the prolific science- fiction novel Ender's Game and all those likewise in its menagerie, but does not precisely follow all the requisite characters and situations. As a matter of fact, there is little mention of Ender at all or of any of the events that followed after the finish of Ender's Game, as the future world(s) created by O. S. Card serves only as the background for what is mostly a character development storyline. I do not own Card Captor Sakura or Ender's Game. A knowledge of either story is not necessary, as all is self-explanatory or perhaps occasionally insidiously explained, and this is merely a fanfiction piece that uses the characters of Card Captors and the settings of Ender's Game.  
He was returning.  
  
He was taking his six month leave in May and would finally be returned to her. But of course, it was quite possible that he had been changed beyond recognizing, by the war and by the Battle School. And she had not seen him for nearly eight years. Yes, people did change. And this young soldier on a leave was not simply any soldier.  
  
She looked upon his return with a foreboding heart as she sat huddled in a little gazebo surrounded by cherry blossoms and green things swaying softly in a gentle breeze. There was a marble throne of sorts in the center of the pavilion, and she had ordered it draped with amethyst colored drapery, fringed in silver. She was clad in silver too, silver and black. Today was the day when the entire human race was clad in black, in mourning for the banishment of Ender, who had saved humanity but was decreed to never be allowed back to the earth.  
  
She was in shimmering black silk tafetta that rustled as autumn leaves, and a silver choker covered her tall slim neck with black pearls and black sapphires. Silver lace edged her multitude of black silk petticoats, peeking from the hemline. Black briolette cut sapphires hung from her ears, too, and a string of silver and pearls woven through her hair held it up in a most elegant coiffure. A plain, slender silver ring decorated each of her fingers and each of her toes as an unusual, piquant adornment. Black for mourning, she thought, though Ender is not dead. And black for mourning for Eriol, too, whose childhood was stolen away in war and death. But black for me, too, she thought, for this terrible dark dreading.  
  
His face with eleven others had been splashed throughout the media networks of the entire world and human extraterrestrial colonies, the squadron leaders who had fought with him and the brilliant commander who had been ultimately the salvation of mankind. The alien race had been defeated and humanity had gone on to colonize their former worlds. Yes, it was a glorious victory.  
  
And now he would come back. Come back to her, to Japan, to Earth. His commander, Ender, had not been so lucky. A leading political theorist had suggested that the shifting factions of nations would launch themselves into the war that had been simmering yet delayed by the more immediate war against the aliens, the Formics. Yet now that war was won and the feuding blocs of allied states would vie for Ender, the most brilliant general in military history, to fight for them. And that desire for his military genius would bring evermore conflict, so thus was it decreed that he must never return to earth.  
  
Tomoyo had asked a shinto priestess to bless Eriol, who was to return in two weeks, and to bless Ender, who would never be able to return to the earth. They had paid a terrible price to save them all. 


	2. Pale Colored is Purity

Admiral  
  
Chapter Two  
  
Pale Colored is Purity  
Tomoyo had allowed her lustrous black locks to be free in the cool breeze of green Japan, but immediately regretted it when the forceful winds of the shuttle whipped them violently. She was apprehensive.  
  
She had dressed herself with care for the receiving ceremony for him. A pale ivory colored sundress was strung with gorgeous Valenciennes lace like drooping and very fine feathers that repeated a pattern of very delicate scrolls interwoven with seed pearls. Her loose hair was strung with pearls, too, and pearls decorated her ears in two large pale teardrops. It was a magnificent array of silk gauze and impeccable pale jewels. It was as if she had clad herself in armor for war.  
  
She had not seen him for eight years, and now he was thirteen. They two alone had been in the ridiculously accelerated class for gifted students in Tomoeda, and therefore spent most of their time correcting their teachers. By the time she was eight, there were no professors in Tomoeda who could keep up with her. Now, there were only a few select professors at Tokyo University who could even teach her something. There was talk of sending her to Oxford in England. At least the language barrier would halt her for a while.  
  
But Eriol had been in Battle School, in space, where only the brightest children were all grouped together at once. And he and his comrades-at-arms had destroyed the alien race by the time he was twelve. Of course, there had already been conflict over who would receive these military geniuses and put them to work on conquering the world, and of course, Japan was puffed up with pride that it was home to two of the squadron leaders in what was being called the Last Battle. What no one deigned to notice was that neither was native to Japan.  
  
Had he survived uncorrupted? Or was he mutated beyond recognition, his fine gentle humor and sharp wit withered by war and brutality? Had he been stained black, where it had once been white and a tinge of blue?  
  
Oh yes, he was clever, alright. But he had also massacred an entire race before adolesence. She wondered if he was still human. Perhaps. Staying at Battle School for eight years didn't exactly do much for one's humanity. Tomoyo remembered that few of her letters were answered in those eight years, and that those replies often came with abject apologies about their enforced rarity and terseness.  
  
He descended from the exit ramp, looking ill at ease with the open spaces of earth, but disquieted and silent. He had no family but was instead raised alone through the minimal presence of a family lawyer.  
  
He stood with stiff attention, the posture of a soldier, as the numerous pedestrian awards were piled up in an interminable ceremony. Even with her legendary reserves of patience in which she could hold herself still for long periods of time, it was wearing off. Eriol, however, looked on with too intelligent restless eyes that never gazed for more than moments at anything. There was a readiness to him. But he was still beautiful, in the untouchable, statuesque sort of way in a uniform of an admiral of the International Fleet.  
  
She caught his glance and captured it when it was over. He walked over to her with an oddly fluid gait, and only when he had approached her she realized that it was the gait of an expert of self defense. No, he had not been idle.  
  
"Tomoyo?" His voice was quiet but threaded with the assurance of command, his eyes too cold for his young age. But he was still Eriol. She nodded.  
  
"Yes. It's me." His eyes were alert, somehow never resting on the same place for too long, too intelligent, too penetrating. And too cold. He was much taller than her now, but he still had the face of a boy, the gentle curve of soft skin, the long dark lashes, the gorgeous lips.  
  
"How are you?" Then he himself smiled at the absurdity of the question.  
  
"I'm well, Eriol." The wind ruffled his hair, and then she realized that a part of him would always be older than he should be, but another part was still what age he should once have been. Let it be so, Tomoyo thought. Oh God, let it be so. 


	3. The Golden Elites

Admiral  
  
Chapter Three  
  
The Golden Elites  
It was a lovely June, heated and steamy but golden with sun.  
  
Eriol had been doing absolutely nothing since he had come home. His old lawyer-guardian had refurbished the old house, complete with servants, a cook, a chauffeur, two gardeners, and a butler. Eriol would never have to work again, as fame brought him monetary tribute, and the death of all family had brought him vast inheritances, and there was also a permanent honorary position as an Admiral of the International Fleet. He could have begun to command whenever he wished it, but for the last month, he had done little.  
  
Fame took its turn with Eriol. He was never to be without guards from the International Fleet, for fear of kidnapping or hostage-taking, yet the enormous grounds of an inherited home with connections to the nets of the world would assuage the restriction of freedom somewhat.  
  
Tomoyo visited him every day.  
  
He had bronzed in the sun, and looked as much as a Roman god than ever. He had Alexander the Great's classically beautiful profile, the cold inky blue eyes and a wealth of dark hair. But his demeanor spoke of a quiet and private anguish, almost but not quite masked. He was every so popular with the young girls of the world. Of course, Ender was nearly as beautiful, but the fact that he had been sent as a colonist never to return diminished it a little.  
  
There were always people at his gate. Two IF officers let her pass with courtesy; Eriol had demanded that she be treated as a princess and not a whit less. The requisite small groups of young girls were there, too. And she got her usual supercilious glares. They made her smile ever so slightly.  
  
The massive home was as imposing but not nearly so impressive as its master. It should have been justly called a palace rather than simply a mansion; pale unhewn stone reared high into the pastel sky and shimmered in afternoon heat. Enormous oversized French windows marched in orderly lines across the façade, and the formal gardens were trimmed with an impressive mathematical precision.  
  
She was escorted in with Eriol's normal flair, but he himself was nowhere to be seen. The vast marble foyer echoed with her soft footfalls and the tinkling of a little nymph pouring water into a seashell basin filled with goldfish, and she was taken to the extended back porches.  
  
And there he sat, with an ignored screen connected to the nets that was currently displaying thick lines of script, obediently waiting his use. And he was staring at the clouds.  
  
Tomoyo set herself upon a lavishly gold-embroidered burgundy cushion, sweeping the pale yellow skirts of her short sundress across the gargantuan cushion, the soft golden chantilly lace on every edge of the dress frothing like finely gold-colored mist. She fingered it absently. The eight golden filigree chains glittering coldly with diamonds chimed softly on her wrist, and she wondered at her mother's never-ceasing lavishness. The golden lace was real gold, woven so delicately and airily that it almost floated as much as the pale yellow silk. Diamond solitaires hung from her ears by golden chains, an unwieldy three carats each. Long chains of gold held her hair back from her face securely. More gold and diamonds glittered on her ankles, and little golden bells tinkled on them as she walked. She was drowning in gold.  
  
His voice broke the gentle somnolence like a wave softly upon the shores.  
  
"Do you know, Tomoyo, that I've never seen the clouds?"  
  
She found her voice.  
  
"So much we take for granted, don't we?" His smile was wintry dark.  
  
"Yes. I never saw them until they were taken away, never cared for them much, not for their poetry or grace until it was decreed by the guardians of the world that I must sacrifice."  
  
"But you never forgot earth. I know it. You see what makes it worth saving."  
  
"Ender didn't, Tomoyo. He understood the sallying forces for three-hundred- and-sixty degree three dimensional interstellar combat, but he had forgotten earth. They brought him back to a lake to allow him to lay around for three months until he remembered."  
  
"Is it so?" Tomoyo murmured softly.  
  
Eriol had often began listless rambles. It were as if he had forgotten how to make conversation. He had forgotten life and replaced it with war.  
  
His eyes dwelt upon the tops of the trees, and he quoted softly,  
  
"Der Gipfel des Baumes waren eines echten grunen Farbe, und waren ringsum das Meer. Es war sonnenbeschienene und schon." The old words of the long- dead German writer brought forth a simple observation of what could have been Eriol's own lands, yet held quiet meaning with the preciousness of what earth provided. The human heart would always long for it, what those silently magical words held within them.  
  
"But now, Tomoyo, I find that I have no purpose in midst of this precious earth. My purpose was finished with the annihalation of the Formics, and now they call me the Acolyte of Xenocide. Only a few now, but they will grow when the revelry in being alive grows dim."  
  
"As it is always so." Her voice was golden, too, but rich with irony.  
  
"Didn't Shakespeare know the nature of man very well? We are a truculent, flightly lot. Romeo and his Juliet would have hated each other had they lived, but theirs was an eternal love because they happily died in their beau geste. Brutus betrays Caesar, but only because he fears him to have too much power, but made a mess of everything in the end anyway. And his machinations for power make Othello weak and stupid, and of course he muddles everything even more than Brutus. And what petty suspicion can do, as that idiot Macbeth has shown us all."  
  
Eriol laughed shortly.  
  
"How simply you put it, Tomoyo. But people won't care about the fact that their actions and emotions are not the best to be had. They only care that they think I am evil and a mass murderer. That's all."  
  
"Eriol, haven't you noticed that most people are stupid? We two are of a highly elite group, and perhaps there might be four or five thousand of us in the entire universe. That's almost twelve billion people, counting the colonists. If we'd only count the six billion or so of the earth, then that might be two thousand."  
  
Eriol sat back with a deceptive ease. He was only wearing dark swimming shorts in the heat, and was perfectly bronze and beautiful. But his face told that he found himself far from beautiful.  
  
"My soul is damned because I have destroyed, Tomoyo. I was raised up on it from the moment I entered that accursed Battle School. I was groomed for destruction. No matter how elite, how much above the average man I am, I will still be damned because it was my superior so-called intelligence that destroys and destorys."  
  
"But you are not a man, Eriol. You're thirteen and you're supposed to be growing into an adolescent. You were tricked and deceived during every moment of the war. If you were ignorant, you cannot still insist on your damnation, you know."  
  
"No, Tomoyo."  
  
"Eriol, let it go."  
  
"How can I?" He asked despairingly in his softly broken voice that still echoed power and command.  
  
"How can I forget what I had done and what I am now? An admiral, Tomoyo. I'm thirteen and I've massacred an entire race and fought a war and now I'm an admiral. Sometimes I wish that I were normal, that I'm still learning what other children learn. I sometimes wish it when I have seen it all happened and over with."  
  
Tomyo regarded him with her sagely violet eyes.  
  
"But you would never be happy with it. It reassured you that you were superb, and you would be miserable to be mediocre. Be very careful what wishes you make."  
  
A sardonic smile spread on his face.  
  
"How well you know me, Tomoyo. I suppose that it is the truth. But why do I get no compromise?"  
  
"Life is unfair, Eriol. Some say that we all start out the same, but that is a lie. There is never fairness, not even from birth or before it. Genetics take such a key role, for it has gifted you your intellect, your face, and luck has given you your fortune. But it will still never be fair. But do remember this Eriol, that although life is so blatantly unfair, it is our duty to make it more fair for ourselves. It is the only way."  
  
Eriol looked at her with that startling blue gaze. His smile was ironic, too.  
  
"I have missed you and these little chats, Tomoyo. You have no idea how much."  
  
Tomoyo only smiled gently. Perhaps he would not drown himself in despair after all. The smile left. But there were other worse alternatives, so much worse. After all, did not people fear damnation worse than death? 


	4. Verdantly Green Envy

Admiral  
  
Chapter Four  
  
Verdantly Green Envy  
There was a little gathering, a party of sorts. Since Syaoran was back from the war, and Eriol too (as they two had both served under Ender), Sakura and Tomoyo were happy. Tomoyo thought sometimes that her heart would rend for love of Sakura, but Eriol's presence dulled it a little. He was the only friend who understood her feelings for Sakura, and wisely was silent.  
  
They three had greeted Tomoyo on a sun-warmed terrace surrounded by miniature antique roses in lovely porcelain pots, and Sakura had bounded up exuberantly to give her a warm embrace, while Syaoran and Eriol watched on reservedly and smiled at Tomoyo politely. Syaoran seemed to be watching Sakura as if she were his only anchor to the world.  
  
Sakura fussed over Tomoyo's silk chiffon dress, a pale green that still managed to be lushly colored. It was embroidered fantastically with silver and even had tiny emeralds on every edge that formed scallops of jewels, but it was short enough to make her careful about how she sat. Her emeralds were strung all on her ankles with little silver bells tinkling with movement, and an emerald ring on three or four of her toes. Emeralds hung from her ears in an obedient row, and there was a simple circle of the most enormous of them casually crowning her dark head, and woven into the emeralds were tiny white flowers that bloomed with enviable grace.  
  
Tomoyo held her chin level with the top of her head, and sat with a straight-backed posture that bespoke of years of training and vigilance.  
  
Sakura, in Tomoyo's opinion, was far more beautiful than herself by far. She was in a pale pink linen sundress decorated with long ivory satin sashes fringed with tiny pink colored pearls, with only simple silver chains on her ankles as adornment, and silver hoops in her ears. But from her vibrated an intensity of life that Tomoyo wanted to capture, to hold. She was the exuberance of the sun.  
  
Syaoran and Eriol watched them silently, and Sakura only laughed at them delightedly and exclaimed over their gloomy expressions and implored to them appealingly to speak and laugh.  
  
Tomoyo laughed softly, too, at Sakura's bubbling, gloriously shining joy. She flitted among Eriol and Syaoran like a pink and satin orchid-scented creature of the forests, pouring tea from exquisite crackled ivory-colored Valarges teaware, and plied upon them sweets and tarts. Tomoyo floated amongst them, too, urging with her admirable grace to be lively in the sun.  
They were subdued. They would laugh quietly and joke, but there was a shadow that had been cast softly and ominously. Tomoyo was happy enough to be with all three, and Sakura most of all, of course, and could not help but kiss her shining cheek twice and exclaim over her happiness.  
  
Syaoran would watch Sakura more than anything. In between their bouts of merry conversation, maintained mostly by Tomoyo and Sakura, Syaoran would watch her like a hawk, as if afraid, lest she evaporate into the sun and wind.  
  
But it was most disturbing to Tomoyo in her desolate happiness of Sakura that Eriol would watch her. Eriol followed her with his eyes, sometimes, watching the glinting green gems through her long ebon curls, her lush green silk flow in accordance with the wind, her violet eyes sleepy with the sun.  
  
Once she caught him staring at her, with a quick, alert eagerness that was almost painful in his eyes. The hard awareness that his gaze usually bespoke of was still there, but it was tenfold more alert, watching her with a cautious and watchful awareness that made her shoulder blades itch.  
  
When Syaoran and Sakura had been seen out in late afternoon, Eriol had found it amusing to stare at her. Irritably, Tomoyo snapped at him.  
  
"Why do you watch me like that?"  
  
His cryptic smile was charming and handsome as ever, but now there was an insolence that was new.  
  
"The better to understand you, and shall we say, a certain flower of your life."  
  
Tomoyo's face turned a little pale under the expert makeup.  
  
"I know that you know, Eriol, so I won't debase you intelligence or our friendship by pretending. Please don't bring that up."  
  
His face darkened under that perfect bronze complexion.  
  
"So charming, Tomoyo, your innocent worship. But little do you know that you are on your inexorable march to le morte d'amour. You sacrifice yourself so willingly. I have never sacrificed for much, except of course, that entire mess of my not so glorious mass murder, that insignificant xenocide."  
  
"Your lost innocence isn't lost on me, Eriol. Its made you very, very bitter and I hope you choke on it."  
  
Tomoyo turned heel and left, cheeks quietly burning with unholy anger.  
  
Eriol did not move. Only, he stared at the clouds and wondered at life's great joke. 


	5. Blue Midnight in Mourning

Admiral  
  
Chapter Five  
  
Blue Midnight in Mourning  
  
There were few real advantages to being admiral, and too many expectations. There was an International Fleet banquet tonight, for the graduation of the last of the Battle School candidates.  
  
Three years had passed, and the unspoken rift between Eriol and Tomoyo had never quite completely been repaired. They were still as civil and elegant and poised as ever towards each other and towards all, but the intangible chasm was there but untouched. It was an awkward chasm.  
  
Eriol was a jaded, cynical, beautiful young general now, and throngs of screaming girls regularly followed him to places. They sometimes bore signs allowing him to "conquer their planet" too. However, the media never even caught a whiff of his private life. He was too clever for them to beat.  
  
He had commanded an army against the insurgents in the Eurasian continent, and won and kept the worlds of men safe from their weapons of mass destruction. He was also then granted a status of general, and was the face that represented the International Fleet to the world. He did not have much to believe in anymore.  
  
Tomoyo had grown into an ethereal beauty who was shockingly talented in the requisite arts and was a brilliant member of the world's collection of literati and artiste. Her brilliance and perfection in all aspects was lauded throughout all the worlds.  
  
They two were the two most gossiped about pair in every world that men had conquered. There were always pictures of them on the nets and talk and articles about them. Curiosity and speculation ran rampant, never sated in the least. But for now, the media could wallow in the precious luxury of being allowed into Eriol's estate and film the two most beautiful people in the world.  
  
A gorgeous quintet of a pianoforte, two violins, a viola and cello made a dramatic and unearthily gorgeous palette of sound in Eriol's great reception room. The soft, solid humming of hundreds of guests in formals filled the air until it could almost be touched, but Tomoyo had decided that it was too overwhelming. No, she did not like crowds. She was reserved at best, reclusive normally.  
  
Jasmine scented the balmy air sweetly, blooming pale and fragrant in the gentle light of a waning moon and coldly glittering stars. Tomoyo sighed softly, sweeping flowing skirts of the deepest sapphire blue of ocean depths across the cool Carrara marble. The silk was so fine, so light, that it had been proclaimed that she wore raiment of seawater. It took numerous layers of the precious fabric to avoid having a transparent dress, draped in a manner reminiscent of a greek goddess. Enormous blue sapphires girdled a slender waist, and were scattered casually through flowing hair, and she looked like a creature of the sea. Understated silver sandals occasionally showed sapphires on her ankles, too, while enormous blue teardrops hung from her ears. She was a rare valuable sight to behold, indeed.  
  
She did not want to return, to the carefully chosen press who were allowed in for the first time in history, for them to take the innumerable pictures and videos to be set on the nets. The wind tuggled flowing layers of deep silk directly up. She was exasperated with them, but a voice that spoke her name shocked her out of any exasperation. Truth be told, the deep masculine voice seemed to vibrate to her very self.  
  
"Eriol." Her mezzo soprano chimed softly like silver.  
  
He was clothed in black broadcloth formals, three carat diamond cufflinks and a titanium encased watch. He practically shouted of immense wealth and arrogance along with it. She did not need this. She did not want to speak with him.  
  
"You should come back now. The press will be suspicious if we two are missing for too long. You know that, Tomoyo. That is the bargain we struck for this party. You as my hostess. You are not to be roaming around staring at stars."  
  
Tomoyo ignored him pointedly. She sometimes still despised him, sometimes wished to bridge the chasm that had grown between them. But it was impossible to bridge it. Too much time had passed, too much politeness was amongst them. He was untouchable as the moon.  
  
But he was as beautiful as the moon. She thought that he was not human for his alien, remote beauty. It was beauty that drove women mad with a glance, and titillated the world with a smile. It was godly, and that was where the world had set him. As an infallible, untouchable, utterly perfect god.  
  
It was a heavy burden to bear.  
  
"Tomoyo," he said now with a more gentle tone. "Come with me."  
  
She turned to regard his exquisite profile in the moonlight, the cello singing with its almost human voice, mournfully, faintly drifting in the night air. His aristocratic breeding was evident in the straight, thin arrogant nose and high forehead, the high cheekbones, a tale of generations of selectivity. He was polished and poised and unbreachable, and then she thought that she had had too much wine. Yes, that was probably the case.  
  
Her head had just received the quantity of liquor that she had consumed, and her thoughts were swimming, ephemeral. She intensely hated herself right then for loosing control. But then, she wanted to control Eriol more than she did herself. Perhaps it could be done.  
  
"I am yours." She said coldly.  
  
Even in the dark, she could see his head move faintly, quickly in surprise.  
  
He said nothing.  
  
Tomoyo's head tilted back slightly in her icy, chiming crystal laughter.  
  
"Do you not want me as your own, precious one?" she asked him archly. "But the world wants me, and you are not of the world. They have set you upon high in Olympus, separated from the sublunary ones. Though I must wonder, what did you think when you used to look at me? When you look at me still?"  
  
His voice was cool and cavalier and distant.  
  
"You have had too much of the champagne, beautiful one." His nickname for her faintly mocked what she had called him.  
  
"But truth rings out still, doesn't it, darling Eriol?"  
  
He would not answer. Tomoyo's lips curved into a secretive smile, her sweetly treacherous smile that was faintly jeering. Eriol watched her inscrutably in the moonlight. He would not give way.  
  
But all of a blink of a second, he moved with his fighter's grace and fighter's speed to capture her, to capture deep blue silk scattered indiscriminately with sapphires, black waves of heavenly magnolia-scented tresses, a slim frail frame that seemed to be constructed of porcelain and ivory.  
  
"A surprise, Eriol?" Her voice was soft, whispering silver.  
  
"I had thought that you have had many women. I had believed that you cared nothing for me, your looks at me notwithstanding."  
  
"Many." He agreed. "But all of them poor substitutes for you, beautiful one." His sardonic voice laughed at her, and his very familiar smile was elegantly malicious.  
  
Tomoyo watched him with a frank curiosity.  
  
"Would you not have the true one?" she asked. "You have me trapped."  
  
"Mm." His single utterance was bemused. "Perhaps I should at that." And he kissed her with a considerable, cavallier pent-up passion that made her fingertips tingle and forget that she still sometimes despised him, that he sometimes mocked her with a dark sardonic humour laced with courtesy.  
  
She forgot all, save him. His lips played over hers hungrily, with an intensity that spoke volumes.  
  
"Is it the Götterdämmerung now, Eriol? Hark, the end of all, even the great Yggdrasil, when the Valkyries flee, and Valhalla crumbles to dust?" Her breathy voice was sultry, and sarcastic, but it made him shiver ever so slightly, as if it vibrated throughout the length of his entire body.  
  
He shook his head in an admonitory fashion and laughed at her joke.  
  
"Do not wax poetic, dear Tomoyo. Those gods were right to know that they were up for a terrible tumble from their heights, now weren't they? And only you have seen my 'dusk,' as you would call it, but only you have seen my fall to the not so lunary. And perhaps you will have seen that doomed sunset with me, my goddess."  
  
Tomoyo laughed softly.  
  
"No, the world sees you still on high, and there you shall remain. Only I have come to join you as one of the Twelve of Olympus. There is no dusk, not that I can see."  
  
"Tomoyo, do you really want them to see us together? When each of our marginal movements are displayed for the world?"  
  
She was silent.  
  
"No, I do not want that."  
  
"I love you and I adore you, Tomoyo."  
  
There was a faint catch of surprise in her breath. There was a keen, alert look in his eyes, as if she would flutter away before he could blink if he didn't watch carefully enough.  
  
"I had thought you had tired of me, with all of those, well, women companions of yours."  
  
"Never!" he said with his suave, sardonic humor.  
  
"Only because I couldn't have you, lovely one."  
  
"Uh huh. I will ignore my misgivings on your more licentious behavior. And you do know that I love you."  
  
The startled turn of his head was enough. He loved her, and that was enough.  
  
"I didn't think that you did, beautiful one. But we must return to the curious hordes. We will speak of this later." Yet he had a look in his eyes as if he had just been saved from a certain death. It was as if his eyes glowed with unspoken affection and triumph and happiness. How did her eyes look, she wondered?  
  
"It is almost over, anyhow. There is no point in returning."  
  
He raised her hand to his mouth, and kissed it, almost reverently, and laid it against his arrogant cheek, his prideful dark head bending as he laid it against his face.  
  
There was a tight rein of control on his face, as he questioned, almost casually,  
  
"Then would you hate me if I asked you to stay with me, beautiful one?"  
  
Tomoyo gazed on him with her inscrutable, lovely eyes. It was a beautiful night. 


	6. Ruby Passion

Admiral  
  
Chapter Six  
  
Ruby Passion  
  
The flaming dawn set fire and gilding to the immense bedchamber, draped in black silk and gold. Light in glistening arrow-straight shafts alighted gently upon satin and rosewood, softly stirring and snatching light from the dark hair of two sleepers, locks of sable intermingling on golden pillows. They stirred languorously, and climbed down the little steps of the enormous bed, to clothe and freshen themselves. The morning was as golden as the happiness that emanated.  
  
Eriol waited for her in the East Solar, the casement windows of two stories giving late morning her full glory.  
  
Tomoyo was announced with reserve and dignity by a manservant, who opened the windows to allow the summer in.  
  
"I'm sorry darling, but it took a little while to have my clothing brought from my home. Did you wait long?" Was her gentle question.  
  
He smiled wickedly.  
  
"No, beautiful one, but I would of course wait forever to simply catch a glimpse of you."  
  
Tomoyo laughed her soft, laugh, alive and ever full of grace and light. Clothed in a flaming red satin morning sundress, a single ruby the size of a pigeon egg hung in the deep neckline, while more were threaded through night dark hair and glinted crimson on delicate and slender ankles. Simple square-cut rubies hung circumspectly from her ears. She was a flaming vision of remembered red passion.  
  
She floated, ever light and ethereal to the table already laden with glittering crystal and gold, and smiled at him.  
  
"You're a wicked child, a dreadful satyr. How is it that you seduced me with such little effort, lovely one? How is it that I surrendered, with so little struggle?"  
  
"But darling," he temporized with a smile, "isn't love such a wonderful invention, and wouldn't you have much rather loved than never known at all?"  
  
She laughed again, full of light.  
  
"Your spouting sentimental and clichéd ideals is certainly a sign of something else."  
  
"Only out of my love for you, goddess."  
  
It were as if he had something monumental, and for her, he had.  
  
"You are the only one, forever."  
  
He suddenly smiled joyously.  
  
"Forever then, if you promise."  
  
"I do."  
  
And there was red passion again.  
  
I'm so glad its over. Really, this story got on my nerves sometimes. I still do find Like Birds in the Wind to be my best work, but hey, I'm glad for any reviews. Everyone is so wonderful to heap such praises on me. I love you all forever.  
  
And now, for something that's real, please go to fictionpress.com to read my work, called the Orchid. It's under the penname sorceress71.  
  
And if you were interested, it is the completely factual story of my life. It even ends at where my life is now. I hope that you enjoy it. 


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